Smart

Razer’s Project Hazel RGB Face Mask Is Becoming a Real Product

Home News (Image credit: Razer) If you’ve ever wished your face mask had more tech, you might not have to wait too much longer. Razer confirmed this week that its RGB-clad, voice-modifying face mask will eventually be a real Razer product you can buy. Razer first showed off a prototype of Project Hazel during the… Read more

Razer is actually making its concept RGB face mask

Razer says it’s planning to ship its concept reusable N95 face mask. Unveiled back in January, Project Hazel includes active disc-type ventilators, Chroma RGB lighting, and voice projection. The face mask is also transparent, allowing for lip-reading and the ability to see facial cues when you talk to people. “We were thinking, this is a… Read more

Rec Room rides uptick in users during the pandemic to become a VR unicorn

Gaming platform Rec Room is now a unicorn, valued at $1.25 billion during a recent funding round of $100 million. It appears to be one of the first, if not the first, virtual reality-focused startup to achieve unicorn status, a notable feat since Facebook’s landmark acquisition of Oculus VR for $2.4 billion in 2014 helped… Read more

Your million-dollar NFT can break tomorrow if you’re not careful

Illustration by William Joel / The Verge Without maintenance, an NFT’s art could disappear Open up the $69 million NFT that Beeple sold at Christie’s, and you won’t find much. The name of the artwork isn’t there. The name of the artist is missing. And crucially, you won’t even find the actual piece of art…. Read more

Apple picked a truly embarrassing time to wrongly reject a simple app update

Apple has a rocky relationship with some iOS developers because of its seemingly arbitrary decisions over what gets published and when — and now, because of a dumb miss, it’s being accused of putting profits ahead of human rights in Myanmar by the founder of ProtonMail and ProtonVPN, even though that’s probably not what happened…. Read more

The lower-cost OnePlus 9R is official, and it sounds surprisingly strong

Yesterday’s OnePlus event covered the high-end 9 and 9 Pro, but outside of that spotlight, the company has quietly revealed a smartly specced, less-expensive model: the OnePlus 9R. CEO Pete Lau confirmed last week that the 9R was on the way and would launch in India. It’s now listed on the company’s Indian website starting… Read more

Dota: Dragon’s Blood on Netflix fails to show what makes Dota 2 special

Competitive games like Magic: The Gathering and League of Legends are absolutely dripping with lore. While they might not tell a story in the traditional sense, they have surprisingly robust fantasy worlds. Usually, you can only catch this in brief snippets through flavor text or character bios. But increasingly, game studios are attempting to build… Read more

Hisense L5F ultra short-throw laser projector is cinematic and smart

Home News (Image credit: Hisense L5F Laser Cinema) With cinemas closed, many of us are looking for ways to create a big-screen cinema experience at home. Step forward the Hisense L5F Laser Cinema, a new ultra-short throw projector that can throw a 120-inch 4K image when placed just 14-inches from a vertical surface. The H5F… Read more

Fitbit adds Tile tracking feature to its Inspire 2 wearable

A new partnership between Fitbit and Tile will now let users of Fitbit’s Inspire 2 locate their devices with Tile’s Bluetooth tracking, the companies announced Monday. The free update is available starting Monday. Users will just have to update their device software in the Fitbit app to add Bluetooth tracking, then download and activate the… Read more

Raspberry Pi Chessboard Project: Play With Friends Online

Home News (Image credit: Lewis, DIY Machines) Just because you’re stuck at home doesn’t mean you can’t play games with your friends—and I don’t just mean through Steam! Maker Lewis from DIY Machines has created a smart chessboard with the help of a Raspberry Pi. This board allows you to play both online or in… Read more

Apple’s HomePod mini reportedly has a secret temperature and humidity sensor

Apple’s HomePod mini smart speaker has an as-yet-undisclosed temperature and humidity sensor in its casing, Bloomberg reports. The sensor’s exact location was confirmed by iFixit, and it appears to be placed away from the speaker’s internal components so it can measure the external temperature. The exact sensor used is a 1.5 x 1.5mm HDC2010 Humidity… Read more

Sony partners with Amazon Music HD for 360 Reality Audio on premium speakers

Home News (Image credit: Sony ) Sony has announced that from 6th April 2021, customers in the UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain can enjoy 360 Reality Audio immersive, object-based content on Sony’s premium home wireless speakers when using Amazon’s CD-quality streaming service Amazon Music HD. The two models receiving 360 Reality Audio support (aka… Read more

Audio Pro unveils limited edition Lemon Addon T3+ portable multi-room speaker

Home News (Image credit: Audio Pro) Scandinavian sound specialist Audio Pro is launching a limited Lemon edition of its Addon T3+ portable multi-room speaker. Designed to co-ordinate with Pantone’s 2021 colour of the year, ‘illuminating yellow’, just 500 speakers will be produced worldwide – a rare delight for home interior devotees. The compact style means it will be a… Read more

Breadwinner is the new smart sourdough starter tracker of my dreams

Sourdough bread is a tricky thing to get right. But Breadwinner, a new smart gadget in development from hardware designers (and bread lovers) Fred Benenson and Sarah Pavis, is looking to try to take a little bit of the mystery out of the yeast by offering an app-connected gadget that can track the volume and… Read more

Vergecast: The Snyder Cut, Samsung Unpacked 2021, and this week in EVs

Every Friday, The Verge publishes our flagship podcast The Vergecast, where we discuss the week in tech news with the reporters and editors covering our biggest stories. This week, co-hosts Nilay Patel and Dieter Bohn chat with Verge reporter Julia Alexander about the long-awaited release of the Zack Snyder version of Justice League on HBO… Read more